


A love like rain...

by theconsultingstrangevidder



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Based on a Greek novel, Discussion of Abortion, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, F/M, Infidelity, Jim is not a villain but he's not good either, Lots of Angst, Minor Violence, Molly Hooper Is A Photographer, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes Plays The Piano, Sherlock Holmes and Mary Morstan Friendship, Unrequited Love, but not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-14 10:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14768139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theconsultingstrangevidder/pseuds/theconsultingstrangevidder
Summary: When the 18 year old Sherlock Holmes meets the 15 year old Molly Hooper he falls in love instantly. Only problem she only sees him like a brother and falls for another much older man. But is there still hope?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is my third and final attempt to post this story. The first time i wasn't satisfied with how i had written the chapters i had posted so i deleted them, worked some more on them and posted them again. And while they were much better than before -and since this is based on my favorite greek novel with the same name- i still wasn't very happy with how they were written because i knew how many mistakes they still had. But God bless my amazing beta reader marcceh ( on tumblr ) or izzidore ( in AO3 ) because she's doing an amazing work on correcting my mistakes and giving me advice. I hope this time you'll enjoy this story more.

_A love like rain... Not like a storm... like rain... Coming and going... Getting stronger or weaker... To cool or drown you... Getting absorbed into the earth, getting lost..._

_How have I lived this way? Why did I accept something in halves? Why did I try to keep in my hands something that I knew would give me only the illusion of a cool breeze and then leave me thirstier than before, with my lips and heart all dried up?_

_How could I accept completing the rain with my own tears, for something I knew was pointless?_

_I saw thousands of sunsets, all alone; the sun diving into nothingness and me drowning into solitude..._

_I heard thousands of instances of thunder and they scared me less than the silence of my empty life._

_I smelled thousands of flowers, but their perfume didn't shower the odorless life that this ''love like rain'' has condemned me to live..._

_I tasted dozens of sweets, but only bitterness lays on my lips..._

_I caressed softly his body, I kept the memory of my hand touching every point of his body, and I hugged myself in my lonely hours, with the illusion that it was him that was caressing me, touching with my fingertips..._

_I laughed loudly at the beginning of my life and I continue to smile from habit, but my eyes never took color from the smiles that were painted on my face, but that never warmed my soul..._

_I cried a lot, for two lives, from despair, from longing for someone that came into my life to show me that happiness is in moments... only moments... And most of them stolen..._

_I painted with bright colors the hours that I was with him, but reality was fading from my paintings, when it wasn’t sinking them in the colors of despair..._

_I wrote ‘I love you's’ on thousands of pieces of paper and I tore them apart right after, scattering their pieces around me, just like my scattered life..._

_I suffered so much that I bled, and at the same time I myself became the source of pain for someone, who I knew was suffering as much as I did..._

_I ignored love, because it wasn't in my conditions..._

_I doomed myself into loneliness, escaping from the streets on which I may have met you, choosing to leave, me, the ''strong one,' the moment that my inabillity to win you was written in the air that i was breathing..._

_And then... I regretted._

_And I turned to the past to find what was missing from my present, but there was nothing there for me. True love was gone... I had sent it away... I had sent away anything that was worthy and I had kept the emptiness..._

_It's a fair punishment..._


	2. Waves Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly wished that her Martha’s fairytales were real. That mermaids did exist in the depths of her beloved sea. Velvet-like creatures carrying the wisdom of centuries, that knew everything about the humans even having never lived among them. What would they tell her, she wondered, at that moment? Would they blame her for her endless mistakes? Or would they comfort her, knowing that love didn’t come into her life as a gift but a curse?

The lion-shaped stone at the entrance to her haven was waiting for her as it did every day, and she turned the wheel of the boat toward it. For three days the rage of the sea wouldn’t let her go to it; three days she was waiting patiently for the anger of the waves to blow over. She could see the waves rush in with a mania to the rocks, even though they knew they would tear them apart. Those isolated beaches were in their care. The laceration of the land their creation. Their own and only piece of art.

She turned and looked beyond to her house behind her, to look farther and farther. Resting in an enclosed haven of its own, drowned in green, isolated… like herself. The shape of the man on the beach was familiar, and that made her smile. Even from that distance she could feel clear as day his agony. It would last until the time he would help her anchor her boat again and then lead her to the quiet kitchen where Martha, his wife, would make her the usual hot chocolate, served in her favorite cup, along with a tender caress in her hair, just like when she was a child.  


______________

Martha came down the stairs with some trouble and touched the sand. It was cool and that relieved, a bit, the pain in her feet. ‘’Well I guess I’m too old for these things now,” she thought, and moved closer to her husband. He still had his eyes turned toward the small white boat going faster and faster.

''What are you doing here?’’ she asked him even though she knew the answer.

''She left. She’s going to the lion again,'' he replied without taking his eyes off the sea. 

''All these days she stayed inside because of the weather, and now that everything is calm today, you didn’t expect she would go?”

''What is this obsession? What is she doing there every day, can you explain it to me? She knows every broken rock, every movement of the sea, every cave…”

“The summer Cornwall is full with tourists, and so she can only enjoy it in the winter, don’t you understand her? Can’t you see how she bites her lips everytime that she sees tourist boats take over her beloved sea? Molly suffers everytime Cornwall is bursting with people… Let her enjoy it. It’s not windy or cold. Come on Mike, let’s go inside, it’s too damp right now and we are not young anymore.’’

She took him by the hand and when the man didn’t look willing to follow her, she tugged his arm again with more strength until he gave in. He was close to his seventies now, just like his wife.  


_______________

They were in their twenties, Mike and Martha, when they started working for Richard Hooper, Molly’s father. Richard’s wife Marian was pregnant at the time and they needed help. 

As a newly engaged couple, Martha and Mike found in this job the eternal solution of their financial problems, and they moved to the mansion inside the main town of Cornwall. It was a giant house, where the windows looked right out at the sea and it was the first thing that their owners saw upon waking up.

The employees looked like a small army, but Martha had been singled out from the beginning and was working exclusively to the care of the kind and delicate Marian. Mike had soon taken over the garden since flowers were his weakness. He talked to them, he looked after them, and soon the difference was obvious. The roses showed right away their favor to the new gardener by spreading their beautiful aroma generously to the masters and visitors of the house. No one knew what it was Mike was doing in the garden, but the results were spectacular and his master was very pleased with him.

But no one expected Marian would die the moment she brought to life her beautiful baby. 

The only thing she managed to say before she was gone was the baby’s name: “Molly”. They were all surprised with her choice, everyone but Martha. She knew the love her lady had for Stephen Parker and his book entitled “Molly,” and it was always near her pillow. She knew it by heart but she read it again and again. Occasionally, she would ask Martha to read it to her. The moment when Sherlock fell to his death in his attempt to cut some flowers and give them to his Molly, who chose to be with his brother, was her favorite, and the sensitive mistress of the house cried every time she was listening to or reading it. 

So the baby’s name was Molly, and no one dared to ignore the order of the dying mother.

Richard, the moment his wife was gone, felt the ground move beneath his feet. He loved her so very much, ever since he could remember himself. They were children of family friends and their union wasn’t a surprise to anyone. Everyone in the main town knew about the love that had young Richard’s heart set on fire. Rumor had it that he had never been with another woman before he made the beautiful Marian his own. His friends made fun of him for the fact that he didn’t follow them into their parties with paid up company. And then he had left Cornwall with a heavy heart, since he had to go to the university to study law, continue his family tradition, and take over the family business.

He finished without unneeded delays. Before he joined the army they were engaged, and when he was finished with that too they were married. For many years their union was not blessed with a child. Marian’s fragile health led to many miscarriages. Richard told her he wasn’t willing to risk her life for a child and they would be better if they stopped trying. But Marian always managed to change his mind. Until Molly was born… with her mother’s life as the price.  


_______________

Molly turned off the engine of her boat and raised her head up. Her eyes met the eyes of the lion. 

On the whim of nature, that rock had taken the face of the lord of the animal kingdom, watching the sea imperiously, like he was waiting for something, like it was a matter of life or death to see it first. The shape beneath the eyes was a bit faded, but Molly could see his mouth with his sharp teeth naked, ready to face the dangers that were coming from the water. Nature had made sure to take care of his rich mane, offering wild bushes to surround the stone head.

She turned her look the blue all around her. The sea had become one with the sky, the sun was blurry, giving birth to strange shadows. One of them looked like a mermaid swimming right beneath the surface. 

Molly wished that her Martha’s fairytales were real. That mermaids did exist in the depths of her beloved sea. Velvet-like creatures carrying the wisdom of centuries, that knew everything about the humans even having never lived among them. What would they tell her, she wondered, at that moment? Would they blame her for her endless mistakes? Or would they comfort her, knowing that love didn’t come into her life as a gift but a curse?

Maybe they could tell her when her life took a wrong turn, where was she at fault and why she was never the same as other girls her age. Now, at her forty-six, she wanted to know… Maybe it was time to finally learn how she managed to scatter to the depths of the sea so much love, so much pain, so much sacrifice… Maybe a mermaid had met with all those things she dropped into the ocean and could give her the answers she had looked for for so many years. After all, wasn’t that why she isolated herself in that small corner of Cornwall?

She looked back at her house again. It looked like the lion did. Trapped in a rock, inaccessible, hidden from curious eyes, with a small swath of sea before it, like a window to the vastness that she adored. There were moments when she wanted to become one with the sea… moments she was thinking to take her boat and sink herself in that dark blue mystery that was pulling her in like a magnet. 

She never did.  


_________________

Martha looked out the kitchen window and saw the little boat had stilled. For a woman her age, she could pride herself still on seeing better than a small child. Molly had stopped in her usual spot. She could imagine her lifting her head to admire the lion, filled with awe. That rock…

“What is she doing now?” asked her Mike, following her eyes.

“She talks with the mermaids,” she said.

“That’s your fault. You and the fairytales you filled her head with, when she was little,” Mike blamed her and took a sip from his coffee with a loud slurp.

“Oh great! Blame it all on me now. If it wasn’t for him… Cursed the day he set his foot on Cornwall! Cursed the day she met him too! Molly, the only child of Richard Hooper, to live like a hermit,” she burst out, and turned to look her husband with her hands in her waist.

“I wonder what he’s doing…?”

“Do not even mention that name in this house,” she half-threatened, and sat on the table, close to him.

“Hold on woman, and I wasn’t asking about him! Another thing crossed my mind… for another creature, I was wondering…”

“That’s the one you should forget. What came over you today?”

“The more time goes by, the more I think about it…”

“You’re too old, I’m afraid. Do not dig these old memories up. Ever.”

“Why… what do you think she’s doing? Why do you think she’s talking to mermaids? Why has she hidden herself from everyone, even life itself?”

“That’s none of our business Mike.”

“None of our business? Us, who raised her like the child we were never blessed to have? Who else does she have? If Sherlock…”

“Damn it, Mike. Will you bring back the entire past now? Sherlock left. He’s gone.”

“And you blame him?”

Martha stopped for a moment and turned her head to the sea again, even if she couldn’t see the boat and Molly now.

“No…” she whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all liked it. Let me know what you think. Second and third chapter are practically ready but i want to make some corrections and additions there too before i send them to my awesome beta reader for the final go.


End file.
